Obituary

Richard Schiewetz, the surviving founding member of Primus Inc., which later became the present WinWholesale Inc., passed away April 18 in Dayton, Ohio. He was 97. Schiewetz was president of the privately owned company from its founding in 1956 as Primus Inc. until 1998 when he became chairman. He retired as chairman in 2002. During Schiewetz's tenure as president and then chairman, the organization grew from one N.O. Nelson plumbing distributor in Pueblo, Colo., to several hundred local companies with annual sales of more than $1 billion when he retired.

Schiewetz was born in Dayton in 1913 and received a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the University of Cincinnati in 1936. Before starting Primus with a small group of other investors, he worked for Servel Corp. (now Trane) and other manufacturing companies in management.